Weight Watchers to Shed Its Computer System

Weight Watchers International has an unusual recipe for trimming down its potential Y2K problems: Get rid of its computers.

The Woodbury, N.Y.-based weight control business on Monday will begin eliminating all electronic registers at its centers and revert back to a manual record-keeping system.

Employees at hundreds of company centers will adhere to a strict regimen of pen and paper by Dec. 19. Client attendance at meetings, merchandise sales and points earned, for instance, will all be noted on company forms kept in folders.

Industry analysts expressed surprise at the company’s seemingly Luddite approach to the year 2000. “Really! Oh, goodness,” said Stephanie Moore, director of Giga Information Group of Cambridge, Mass., specialists in helping large companies become Y2K-compliant.

But Moore also said the measure makes sense. Advisors recommend companies identify a variety of alternatives to deal with potential Y2K problems, “and one of those strategies is manual.”

In fact, Moore said, companies that are less automated, such as manufacturers who wrestle with frequent breakdowns of outdated equipment “have really good manual processes because they are used to using them.”

In contrast, she said, many high-tech companies face the potential of being frozen for weeks in the event of, say, a power outage.

Not so at Weight Watchers. “It’s real easy. It’s real basic,” said Wendy Yellin, spokeswoman for the company’s 272 centers in the western United States. “We just want it all changed back to the way it had been for a really long time.”

Yellin said the privately held company no longer needed to keep computerized records when it stopped selling its frozen food line at centers in 1997. But many centers kept using the devices to track activities.

“We are Y2K-ready,” she said, adding that the company wanted to ensure all systems would be “go” after Jan. 1.

At one center in the San Fernando Valley this week, dozens of members lined up at the counter as workers recorded fees paid on the keyboard of an antiquated computer with a cash drawer. A sign taped to the counter listed class dates and times for employee training in the old methods of record keeping.

Asked if computerized records wouldn’t be more efficient than hand tallies, one worker, who declined to be identified, said: “I suppose it would be. But what can I say? We go with the flow.”

One food industry analyst said Weight Watchers’ cautious approach is crucial, since the company’s busiest season comes after the holiday feasts end.

“This is one company that cannot afford not to operate in January,” said John M. McMillin of Prudential Securities in New York. “January is to Weight Watchers what April is to H&R; Block.”

McMillin estimates that sales of $400 million last year provided $70 million in operating income for Weight Watchers, which has centers in 30 countries around the world.

Cara Bishop, Weight Watchers’ manager of consumer affairs, said the decision to revert to a manual system was made after the company was recently sold. She said the new owners did not want to install a new computer system without first reviewing all of the options. The manual system, meanwhile, will make all of the centers consistent in their record keeping, Bishop said.

Weight Watchers was sold Sept. 29 by H.J. Heinz Co. for $735 million to Artal Luxembourg, S.A., a European private investment firm.